The Club Dumas

He didn’t say another word to the girl. When they arrived at Orly, he ignored her, although he was aware of her walking behind him along the airport concourses. At passport control, after showing his identity card, he turned around to see what kind of document she had, but all he saw was a passport bound in black leather without any markings. It must have been European, because she went through the gate for EC citizens. Outside, while Corso was climbing into a taxi, giving his usual address, the Louvre Concorde, she slipped into the seat beside him. They drove to the hotel in silence. She got out first and let him pay the fare. The driver didn’t have any change, so Corso was slightly delayed. By the time he crossed the lobby, she had already checked in and was walking behind a porter who had her rucksack. She waved at Corso before she entered the elevator....

“It’s a very nice shop. Replinger, Booksellers, it says. Auto­graphs and historical documents. And it’s open.”

She gestured to the waiter that she didn’t want to order and inclined her head toward Corso across the table, in the cafe on the Rue de Buci. Like a mirror her liquid eyes reflected the street, which itself was a reflection in the cafe window.

“We could go there now.”

They had met again at breakfast, as Corso was reading the papers at one of the windows overlooking the Place du Palais Royal. She had said good morning and sat down at the table. Had devoured toast and croissants with a healthy appetite. Then looked at Corso, with a rim of milky coffee on her upper lip, like a little girl. “Where do we start?”

So now there they were, two blocks from Achille Replinger’s bookshop. The girl had offered to go and find it while Corso drank his first gin of the day. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last.

“We could go there now,” she said again.

Corso still hesitated. He’d seen her tanned skin in his dreams. He was holding her hand, crossing a deserted plain at dusk. Columns of smoke rose on the horizon, volcanoes about to erupt. Occasionally they passed a soldier with a grave face, his armor covered with dust, who stared at them in silence, the man as distant and cold as the sullen Trojans of Hades. The plain was darkening on the horizon, and the columns of smoke grew thicker. The impassive, ghostly faces of the dead warriors contained a warning. Corso wanted to get away. He pulled the girl along by the hand, anxious not to leave her behind, but the air was becoming thick and hot, stifling, dark. Their flight ended in an interminable fall, an agony in slow motion. The darkness burned like an oven. The only link with the outside was his hand holding on to to hers in an effort to continue. The last thing he felt was her hand, its grip fading, finally turn to ash. And in front of him, in the darkness enveloping the burning plain and his mind, white marks, traces as fleeting as lightning, picked out the ghostly contour of a skull. It wasn’t pleasant to recall. To remove the taste of ash from his mouth and erase these horrors, Corso finished his glass of gin and looked at the girl. She was watching him, a disciplined collab­orator waiting quietly for instructions. Serene, she simply ac­cepted her strange part in the story. Her loyal expression was inexplicable.

She stood up at the same time as he did. He put the canvas bag over his shoulder, and they made their way slowly toward the river. The girl, walking on the inside, occasionally stopped in front of a shopwindow, calling his attention to a picture, an engraving, a book. She looked at everything with wide eyes and intense curiosity and seemed nostalgic as she smiled thought­fully, as if searching for traces of herself in those old things. As if, in some corner of her memory, she shared a common past with the few survivors washed up by the tide after each of history’s inexorable shipwrecks.

There were two bookshops, one on either side of the street, facing each other. Achille Replinger’s had a very old, elegant front of varnished wood, with a sign that said LIVRES anciens, AUTOGRAPHES ET DOCUMENTS HISTORIQUES. Corso told the girl to wait outside, and she didn’t object. As he went to the door, he looked in the window and saw her reflection over his shoul­der. She was on the other side of the street, watching him. A bell rang as he pushed the door open. There was an oak table, shelves full of old books, stands with folders of prints, and a dozen old wooden filing cabinets. These had letters in alphabetical order, carefully written in brass slots. On the wall was a framed autograph with the caption “Fragment of Tartuffe. Moliere.” Also, three good prints: Victor Hugo, Flaubert, and Dumas in the center.